HSU WEI

born 1521, Shan-yin, Chekiang province, China died 1593 Pinyin Xu Wei colourful figure in the history of Chinese painting as child prodigy, bureaucrat, apparent madman, and painter. At one point in his life Hs Wei was sent to jail, but he pretended madness and was released; he also was supposedly a drunkard and died in poverty. While he is later ranked among the Che school artists (such as Tai Chin) who perpetuated the by-then conservative traditions of the Southern Sung academy style of Ma Yan and Hsia Kuei, he was by temperament and painting style more like such 17th-century individualists as Shih-t'ao and Chu Ta. His painterly style is broad and often explosive.